DEVELOPMENT of new materials and new technologies for use in photovoltaic cells capable of generating electricity from sunlight is helping to power the growth of a research centre in Denbighshire.

The Centre for Solar Energy Research based at the Technium OpTIC on St Asaph Business Park is recognised by experts around the world as helping spearhead a scientific revolution in PV thin film technologies.

Centre director Stuart Irvine believes PV solar energy holds tremendous potential in meeting the UK’s future energy needs. But he says that researchers must first show that the emerging technologies can be scaled up to commercial production and costs reduced.

“We want to see knowledge exploitation of the research to generate economic benefit,” said Professor Irvine.

“Our mission is to is to examine what the next generation of PV modules are going to look like.

“We are working with different materials and using different technologies to those currently being used in industry.”

Much of the focus of the centre’s work is on metal-organic chemical vapour deposition - a technique for depositing thin layers of atoms onto a semi-conductor wafer.

The researchers are looking not only at better materials and improved materials engineering but also at how the technology can be extended into industrial processes requiring high volume production.

The next big step forward – still in discussion with the Welsh Assembly Government – will be create extra space in a new unit on land alongside the OpTIC for a cluster of new buildings that will enable technologies in polymers, ultra precision surfaces and solar energy at the core of OpTIC’s technology offer.

Investment running into millions of pounds is likely to be sought from the EU’s Convergence funding programme and other partners for the new technology park which will in effect constitute a second phase to OpTIC.

“One of the new buildings will be a solar energy technology centre which will provide space for industry to come and develop the process up to a pilot plant,” said Professor Irvine.

“Our dream is to take our technology and to get inward investment or spin-off businesses that will become volume manufacturers of thin film PV modules.”

He added that renewable energy technologies was a growth area and he believed there was considerable growth potential for the PV industry in Wales.

Employment in the Centre for Energy Research, part of Glyndr University, is currently eight.

However, Professor Irvine said that could easily grow to around 15 over the coming year, and double again if OpTIC Phase 2 gets the green light.